The master speaks

Having worked through the entire Peter Schiff podcast back-catalog and with Lew Rockwell only broadcasting sporadically, I was getting a bit short of things to listen to down at my local gym. Fortunately, Mises.org managed to ride to the rescue; it now provides audio books.

I listened to the first of them today, 'The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle'. Despite already being fully steeped in Austrianism, I was simply blown away by the accuracy of the descriptions of what a boom and bust cycle is, and how to cure one, from Uncle Murray Rothbard, amongst others.

If you really want to understand what this current depression is, and why all western governments are doing all of the exact wrong things to prolong it and worsen it, with their increasingly panicky and stupid interventions, download the entire audio book and listen to it at your leisure. The full audio book page is here:

=> http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=112

To download it to your iPod's podcast directory, simply subscribe via the iTunes advanced menu to:

=> http://mises.org/Feeds/media.ashx?CategoryId=112

If you just want to listen to the killer chapter of this book, simply download:

=> http://mises.org/multimedia/mp3/audiobooks/ATTC/ATTC_4_Rothbard.mp3

Let me give you a textual highlight from this one particular MP3 file. This quote is from the essay 'Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure', by Uncle Murray, first written in 1969, which is the third chapter of the audio book:

Mises, then, pinpoints the blame for the cycle on inflationary bank credit expansion propelled by the intervention of government and its central bank. What does Mises say should be done, say by government, once the depression arrives? What is the governmental role in the cure of depression? In the first place, government must cease inflating as soon as possible. It is true that this will, inevitably, bring the inflationary boom abruptly to an end, and commence the inevitable recession or depression. But the longer the government waits for this, the worse the necessary readjustments will have to be. The sooner the depression-readjustment is gotten over with, the better. This means, also, that the government must never try to prop up unsound business situations; it must never bail out or lend money to business firms in trouble. Doing this will simply prolong the agony and convert a sharp and quick depression phase into a lingering and chronic disease. The government must never try to prop up wage rates or prices of producers' goods; doing so will prolong and delay indefinitely the completion of the depression-adjustment process; it will cause indefinite and prolonged depression and mass unemployment in the vital capital goods industries. The government must not try to inflate again, in order to get out of the depression. For even if this reinflation succeeds, it will only sow greater trouble later on. The government must do nothing to encourage consumption, and it must not increase its own expenditures, for this will further increase the social consumption/investment ratio. In fact, cutting the government budget will improve the ratio. What the economy needs is not more consumption spending but more saving, in order to validate some of the excessive investments of the boom.

Which is, of course, the exact opposite of what the idiots Mandelson and Brown are currently trying to achieve in their Keynesian super-bout of utter madness.

'Uncharted territory', my derriere, to misquote Peter Mandelson. Murray Rothbard knew exactly what would happen nearly forty years before the event, exactly why it would happen, and exactly what fools such Peter Mandelson and Gordon Mugabe would do about it, in complete contravention of what they should be doing about it, which is absolutely nothing except perhaps the real cutting of government taxation, red tape, and spending.

You can read the full text of Uncle Murray's piece, here:

=> http://mises.org/story/3127

There will be no excuses when this crisis finally concludes, whenever it does, and for whatever reason. All of this knowledge is public and all of it is online. All you have to do is to listen to it or to read it. Oh yes, and give up the addictive drug of believing that socialism is anything other than evil, maligned, wrong, stupid, and dangerous.